The House of Usher

Ryan Usher (Rufus Swart) and his girlfriend Molly (Romy Windsor) head to his uncle's isolated estate after receiving a letter from him. Before arriving they crash their car when they see two ghost children on the road. Molly makes it to the home and is told Ryan has already been picked up and is being cared for. She then meets uncle Roderick (Oliver Reed), who assures her all is fine despite his reluctance to let her visit Ryan and the fact he won't let her leave. Yup, ol' Roderick is a perv and, after burying the still-alive Ryan, forces himself onto Molly to carry on the family line. Also, in a nod to THE OLD DARK HOUSE, a crazy brother named Walter (Donald Pleasence) lives up in the attic. As you can see, this barely has any connection to the Poe short story outside of a few events and character names. Filmed in South Africa, producer Towers at least got his monies worth with some nice looking sets. And leads Reed and Pleasence are total pros, although I suspect Reed enjoyed his moments feeling up the attractive Windsor (who was already accustomed to primordial beasts as she just survived HOWLING IV). Director Alan Birkinshaw can't be bothered with things like suspense or terror though. He does throw in a few gore scenes for good measure. Towers' two other Poe "adaptations" were MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1989; with Frank Stallone and Herbert Lom!) and BURIED ALIVE (1990).

Oliver Reed, Donald Pleasence. Two of my all time favourite actors. Edgar Allan Poe. What could go wrong? Sadly quite a lot. These two great actors play brothers, living in the same house but have not seen each other for 15 years, apparently. Bit hard to digest that. Ollie plays sleazy Uncle Roderick, thankfully he does have plenty of on screen time. Pleasence however is not seen until an hour in. And not one of his finest roles. Usher is set in a fabulous Gothic mansion, good exterior shots. The interior has a rich colour palate, reminded me somewhat of Dario Argento's classics from the 1970's. However there is a cheapness in the look of these sets, especially when the obviously fake masonry starts to crumble. This film took a while to get going in terms of horror. It is a poor adaptation of the Poe tale and was ultimately watchable but somewhat disappointing. So now to my dilemma - I recently bought a nice, clean copy of this on VHS. The box with its artwork looks good but in all honesty I'll probably never watch it again. As a collector I don't like to lose tapes but I'm torn as to whether there is much point in hanging on to this one.

This movie can hardly be considered to be an adaptation of Poe, because it barely has any touch points. They are built on the same base, but the construction is completely different. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it is. Ideas that changed Poe's story are not that bad, but the realization is lousy. The complete scenery screams FAKE, the story is inconsistent, acting mediocre, directing like in porn, and ending knocks the final nail in the coffin. If we simply cut the last scene and end movie with the one before, without any changes, we'll get an average '80s B horror ending. Why did they feel the need to additionally annoy viewers, already annoyed by wasting an hour and a half on a crappy movie, by adding terribly stupid, inconsistent, illogical and most of all redundant nonsense to the movie that already had a decent ending in the previous scene... I have a feeling that team, who spent their lives making porn exclusively, suddenly decided to make Poe adaptation. If that's true, good job guys, but if it's not the case, then please, change profession, or at least keep your hands off of classics.

4/10

Harry ALan Towers' produced this, another remake of Poe's classic tale. Oliver Reed does a lot of whispering and Donald Pleasence runs around a lot with his chainsaw. Not really a very good film but worth a look for it's two stars, who are again lumbered with a none too bright script.The youngsters Rufus Swart and Romy Windsor are positively dire, but scenes like a hungry rat being placed on a man's privates are quite fun to watch.

Judge a movie on its own merits I say. Yes there is a couple of bad acting moments but there is nothing wrong with this movie per se. The movie has good production values, story and music. Oliver Reed doesn't disappoint and neither does Donald, those guys are very reliable actors.

You know the story, couple crash car and girl ends up in mansion by herself being prepped for her reproduction values by some evil inbred wealthy peeps. It's really nothing new to horror fans. Maybe the movie is a little drawn out and maybe some of the characters don't seem 100% all the time. I think a lot of people were not expecting its weirdness though, weird horror is not everyone's cup of tea. I liked it and at anything less than 5/10 its under-rated imo.